Carlsbadworker, I am a CPA and a Real Estate Broker. I am not currently in practice in either field. I am baffled by your characterization of crooked CPA’s. I believe you are referring to crooked tax preparers, and there are lots of those out there. A tax preparer takes a “Mickey Mouse” course and another “Mickey Mouse” state exam and, voila, can hang up his/her shingle. My apologies to any tax preparer on this board, but it is what it is. I know, I took the qualifying tax preparer course online a couple of years ago just as a refresher and I was shocked at the lack of depth of the coursework. From what I know of CPA’s, the crooks are few and far between. Believe me, no CPA in their right mind would risk that license and I personally have never encountered any CPA that would fake tax returns. It’s just not worth it after what you go through to get the license, which consists of a Bachelor’s degree, many units of accounting and other business classes, a 2 year internship or the equivalent via a 5th year of accounting classes, a 3 day exam equivalent to the Bar exam, and the oversight of the State Board of Accountancy, which does police its members and responds swiftly and harshly to complaints, unlike the DRE. I was involved in a State Board of Accountancy investigation several years ago as a witness because I had prepared a portion of a tax return in which the principals had accused my boss of malpractice and I saw firsthand how promptly the complaint was responded to and how rigorous the investigation was. In fact, if you go to the State Board website and look up a licensee, you can see if there has been any action against that person.
Now that I’ve defended the CPA profession (I never defend the real estate profession, it is overrun with crooks!), let’s move on to your situation. I don’t give tax advice as my license is in inactive status, but your description leads me to believe that a good mass marketed tax prep program such as TurboTax would work quite well for you. It appears that you do not need more than the most basic $49 TurboTax package.
I hope you are enjoying Temeku Hills. I lived there for a year and own rental property there. It is a beautiful community and has the benefit of a vigilant HOA.
